Players Union

The National Basketball Assn. and its players' union, who have been without a contract all season, have agreed on a 6-year contract, Commissioner David Stern said Tuesday. Some key provisions: --The number of players available for the draft is sharply reduced. --The right of first refusal for teams seeking to keep players who have played out their options is significantly modified.

Negotiators for the NBA and its players union will meet in New York Tuesday in an effort to resolve differences that have delayed signing of a six-year, $5-billion labor contract ratified by the players and owners before the league allowed the 1995-96 season to begin. Asked Friday if there would be a lockout--as there was after the close of the 1994-95 season--NBA Commissioner David Stern said, "I hope not. We're trying to wrap this up."

When the 24-day NFL strike ended in October, the league continued to enforce the provisions of the 1982 contract with one notable exception -- no longer would union dues be subtracted by the teams from players' paychecks and forwarded to the NFL Players Association. Instead, player reps would have to collect the substantial collections -- $2,400 a year for veterans, $2,900 for rookies. From all indications, that's causing some trouble for the NFLPA.

If federal mediators had hoped to defuse the rhetoric in baseball's collective bargaining dispute, the message was not received. There were more insults than insights Monday, most coming from Donald Fehr, executive director of the striking players union, who said the owners' negotiator, Richard Ravitch, lacked independence and was strictly a "hatchet man" for the owners.

The chief negotiator for baseball's owners said today that spring training camps will not open unless both sides agree on an outline for a new collective bargaining agreement. Chuck O'Connor, general counsel of the owners' Player Relations Committee, made the statement in response to a question at the end of a nearly two-hour briefing for reporters on the proposal being pushed by the owners. The first players are scheduled to report for spring training Feb. 15.

The baseball players' union officially rejected the owners' offer on service time Thursday, but management negotiator Randy Levine said he thought the sides had "inched closer" to an agreement. Negotiations have been put on hold again until Monday, giving owners a chance to plan their next move on the pivotal issue of restoring service time for the 75 regular-season days the players were on strike in 1994-95. Management's labor policy committee will meet with Levine by phone today.

The NFL Players Assn. has voted to sue Warren Moon, Dan Marino and other players for breach of contract, it was learned Thursday. The suits, alleging the athletes made unlawful market-licensing agreements with representatives of the league's 28 club owners, are to be filed Monday in New York or Minneapolis. A source said they will be followed by additional suits against every NFL athlete who, in the last three years, has signed owners' authorizations after first signing player authorizations.

NFL Hall of Fame members Mike Ditka and Joe DeLamielleure continued their war of words with NFL Players Assn. boss Gene Upshaw on Monday, and introduced hobbled former offensive lineman Brian DeMarco, 35, as a prime example of the union's indifference to the medical needs of scores of ex-players. "This is unacceptable," Ditka thundered at a news conference organized by Gridiron Greats at his Chicago restaurant. "We are past having committees. It's about right versus wrong. Do the right thing.

David Stern, the National Basketball Assn. commissioner, said Saturday that league owners "are not going to accept an invitation to chaos" in response to the players' union decision to withdraw from the collective bargaining process. On Friday, player representatives from the league's 23 teams accepted a plan to not certify the union, which would eliminate the union as the exclusive collective bargaining agent for the players.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - There might be a perfectly good reason to vote against Marvin Miller for the Hall of Fame. It is long past time for the people casting those votes to explain them. Baseball's longest streak of absurdity continued Monday, when for the sixth time a committee declined to elect Miller to the Hall of Fame. The full and proper name of the Cooperstown shrine is the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Yet, there is a vast emptiness to the place without Miller, the pioneering leader of the players' union.